


Loki And The Dwarves of Svartalfheim

by DictionaryWrites



Series: Marvel-Myth Fusion Tales [1]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Horror, Loki Feels, Manipulation, Pranks and Practical Jokes, Torture, Tricksters, Warning: Loki
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-05
Updated: 2015-08-05
Packaged: 2018-04-13 02:57:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,653
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4505061
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DictionaryWrites/pseuds/DictionaryWrites
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Another Marvel retelling of a myth! This time, it's Sif's golden hair, Loki and the dwarves, and the creation of Mjolnir!</p><p>Loki plays a trick that is far too unpleasant to be easily forgotten and brushed aside: he is sent forth to earn his Sif's forgiveness for his crimes, but Loki is anything but trite.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Loki And The Dwarves of Svartalfheim

Loki is bored.

He watches from the palace wall as Sif and Thor spar together: they will grow to be mighty warriors, he is certain, even though Sif is a woman. Never has Fandral taunted Sif for lacking a beard on her pretty features, and nor has Volstagg tugged his own in a mocking fashion whilst meeting her eyes in the hall.

Loki glances at Hogun, with his own beardless face and deep frown, concentrated as the Vanir warrior is on Sif and Thor's mighty tussle. Sif holds her own well, and Loki privately believes that the sword is not appropriate for Thor's hand, that he should have some different weapon, but what he knows not – he simply knows that Sif is almost besting him, and that with something that complemented Thor's hand as well as her sword complements hers, or as Loki's daggers match his own, he would beat her with ease.

Thor tosses her to the ground with a piece of clever footwork, and she laughs, tossing back the long, golden curls flowing back from her head before she stands with Thor's assistance. Her clean face is framed by those pretty locks, and Loki touches his own chin thoughtfully, feeling the smoothness of the skin.

Thor had had a beard by the time he was Loki's age. As had father.

He can't help but wonder if he did have the stubble he ought for a young man growing into his adulthood if he would be permitted to train for battle with Thor and his friends, rather than being required to complete such study – Loki itches to use his magic for something more exciting than little spells about the palace, but no one will let him.

And it's not as if anyone but his parents can show such skill and flair with it.

“Oh, Loki!” Fandral calls, tone teasing as he looks up at Loki above them on the wall, three or four books hovering about him with an effortless seiðr none of them could ever hope to perform. “Are you despairing of your babe's face once more? Don't worry, lad – I'm sure some man will consider you pretty enough to marry!” Loki throws down a dagger at him, but Hogun catches it before it can drive itself into Fandral's breast, and gives Loki a stern look. He resists the urge to stick out his tongue in response.

Fandral laughs, laughs so hard his knees nearly buckle and he has to lean against Volstagg to be steady, and Loki feels fury bubble in his chest – not for the first time, he considers **murdering** the so-called Dashing, but-

“Fear not, Loki,” Sif comes in, tone deceptively sweet, “Perhaps you might hope for a woman like _me_ , who will not mind a beardless thing as a husband to warm her hearth and raise her children!” Thor laughs, the guffaw loud, and he pats Sif's back, his fingers lingering a moment too long on the golden hair loosely tied behind her head.

Loki squares his jaw, and begins to scheme.

\---

Loki creeps silently, body pressed to the wall. He had tried to cast himself into invisibility, but it is a magic he has yet to master, so difficult is it to draw every colour from his form and walk without them into the night – instead he runs as the tiniest spider, virtually invisible to the Godly eye, and he makes his way to the quarters he knows to be Sif's.

He slides into the room, beneath the hinge of the door, and he draws himself up to his real self, looking down at her where she sleeps in her bed. She wears no night dress, and the evening is too hot for the blankets to be drawn about her – instead, they are tangled haphazardly around and between her legs, her chest bare to the night cool filtering in through the window. Loki has no interest in the breasts of so _foul_ a woman, and he ignores them, letting magic flow into her body with nought but a touch of two fingers to her cheek, and she falls into a deeper sleep before him, almost appearing to cease to breathe.

And with that, he draws up the razor his father had given him _years_ ago, falsely believing Loki would begin to grow a beard as all men of Asgard do, the razor he has never used.

And he begins to shear the golden hair of the Lady Sif from her lovely head.

\---

His mother watches Loki carefully as he draws up his magic, doing his best to curve the conjured fire subtly about the vase before him in order to burn the right design into the wood. This is magic at its most difficult – the work is intricate and requires the most _careful_ concentration to ensure the lines made are crisp and as intended, and Loki finds the control difficult, but very useful.

There had been a time, after all, when Loki could not so much as magic a straight line in the sand.

The scream is piercing, and it echoes loudly down the corridor: Loki's head whips around despite his mother's sharp protest, and the carved vase of wood crumbles to burnt dust upon the table, utterly incinerated.

“What have you **done**!?” screeches the young lady as she enters the room, hastily-booted feet making loud sounds upon the library floor. Mother stands, but Loki is already laughing as Sif comes towards him, her head as bald as a shorn sheep's body, wearing only a barely tied dress to cover her form. “Loki!”

She has him by the throat, but he cares not, turning the flesh to painfully cold ice beneath her fingers until she lets out a sharp sound and releases him. “Why, Sif, fear not,” he purrs sweetly. “Perhaps a man like _me_ will marry you, who wants a wife as ugly and hairless as a rock face to protect his hearth!”

She slaps him across the face, and his head turns, but still he laughs.

“ _Loki!”_ Frigga hisses at him, and she steps forwards, fussing over Sif's naked head as the supposed warrior begins to weep, but her magic cannot coax the hair to grow anew from Sif's scalp – Loki had well-ensured no new locks would come forth. “How could you be so _cruel_?”

“Why is it, Mother, that my cruelties are held to higher account than everyone else's?” Loki asks mockingly, and his mother _tuts_ at him, too furious to give a real response. Thor's head dips around the doorway of the library, apparently curious as to the horrendous screeching the pathetic Sif is making, and within a second he has flown across, peering down at Sif and touching her gently and sympathetically as Frigga's mother does.

Loki is in the swift process of rolling his eyes when Thor's hand grabs at Loki's own hair, and Loki lets out a sharp _squeak_ of sound as his brother lifts him by the roots of the dark locks, struggling at the pull on his scalp but not wishing to injure Thor in the process of pulling himself away. “Fix this, Loki.”

“I **can't** , Thor,” Loki spits right back as Thor all but thunders into his face. “I've vanished all the seeds of the hair she once had. Do you not think she looks pretty nonetheless?” Thor smacks him hard, far harder than Sif had, and Loki flinches, touching his own burning cheek as his brother drops him.

“You will fix this, Loki, or I will break every bone in that feeble body of yours and drop you at Father's feet.”

“Oh, _come_ now, brother-”

“You are no brother of mine if you can be so callous!” Thor interrupts him, and Loki is stopped short, staring with his frosty eyes slightly wide as the older man pulls away, feeling his joy at having caused such mischief sink swiftly into horror at being rejected so by his brother. He looks to his mother, but she ignores him, lips set, and suddenly Loki feels like sobbing instead of laughing.

He can stand to be hated by everyone else, but not by his family. Not by Thor and Mother.

\---

The trek to Svartalfheim would be a long one, were Loki so constrained as his brethren, but he needs not walk – Skywalking is a magic Loki could do even at his youngest, and he recalls stepping on the bare air about his bed when not in the mood for sleep. Mother had once said he had flown from his very cot, and the idea strikes him with a sort of fond warmth even now, when she had looked at him so _coldly_ , as if Sif really mattered, in the scheme of things.

He comes to ground upon the path into the cavernous realm, having slid as easily and fluidly between planes as water between rocks, and begins to walk forth, his head high, his chin squared. He is princely, he knows – even lacking a beard they know him to be the young monarch's son, son of the Allfather, and he is to be respected.

“The Trickster! _”_ proclaims one of high, reedy voice. He is to be respected, certainly, but he is too well _known_ to be respected well.

“I search for a dwarf that might make me a head of golden hair.”

“And eyebrows, too?” the dwarf asks, arching his own thick, red-thatched brows.

“Not for _me_ ,” Loki says with the irritation of an aristocrat not to be kept waiting, tossing his own hair to the side, and then he says, “A head of hair, crafted of fine golden strings, for the Lady Sif, of Asgard.”

“ _Ah_ ,” says the dwarf easily, and Loki resists the urge to draw out a dagger and thrust it to the other man's throat, just to see the blood seep through that thick, braided beard and soak the floor between them. “Why, I can help you with that, dear prince. I am Ivaldi, and my sons are master smiths!” Loki follows the dwarf down the corridors, through cavernous, wide paths carved deep into the mountain side – infuriating and annoying as dwarves might be, one can hardly deny their ability to create marvelous architecture, and mountains do nought to stand in their way.

Loki stands upon a platform above the workshop of the dwarves to watch them as they work, and he watches with _care_ and concentration – fast are the dwarves at their work, and Loki is fascinated at their speed and their prodigious skill. Firstly comes the hair for Sif, woven of a hundred strands of true gold, hanging so softly and so delicately one might believe them to be grown from her head, but the dwarves were not yet finished.

Loki marvels at the creation of Skidbladnir, crafted upon a tiny worktable with cloth sails, with the tiniest fragments of waterproofed wood – a ship that would always sail with a favourable wind, but moreover could be folded up and placed within a pocket. He is ever more delighted at the creation of Gungnir, the deadliest spear Loki has ever laid eyes upon.

He takes these gifts, and he grins, knowing he can offer each of them to Father, to Thor, to Freyr, but--

Why, Loki has already come so far. Why should he tread home so quickly, when he might gather more marvels to his chest, and from other dwarves besides? Smirking with the plan at hand, he settles his treasures within an enchanted satchel hanging at his side and walks through the dwarven caverns once more.

“What do you seek, princeling?” asks the dwarf Brokkr as Loki makes his way forwards, and beside him his brother, Sindri, looks up himself. They are very skilled smiths, so Loki has discovered in listening here and there, but no doubt they cannot compare to the skill of Ivaldi's many children.

“Why, I've merely received three wonders from the sons of the smith Ivaldi,” Loki says airily, noting the way the dwarves tense at the shoulders at the mere _mention_ of a rival within the caverns, “And now I am making my way home. After all, what marvels could possibly compare to those that I carry on my back?”

“We could easily create better wonders!” sparks Sindri, and Loki laughs, dropping his head back and knowing how much it will better incite the fury of the dwarves.

“ _You_? I think not! I would bet my head that you could do no such thing, and create no matching wonders for me to distribute in my father's court!” Taunts come easily from Loki's mouth, and they hit their target.

“Your wager is accepted, trickster!” snaps Sindri before Brokkr can offer his own opinion, but when Loki glances at him the first dwarf nods, lips pressed together, expression stout. Oh, Loki is truly exceeding himself this time. Loki steps back to watch them work, settled across the room, but he leaves an illusion of himself in his leathers in order to fly: he transforms himself with ease into a small horsefly, buzzing about the room with speed.

His illusion makes a vague taunt as he leans back, confident with his hands on the brick behind him and his legs spread, but the dwarves ignore the faux-Loki and barely notice the real one. Loki waits until the most opportune moment, when Sindri is just ready to pull his creation of gold from the fire, and then he flies in, biting sharply at the dwarf's hand.

Sindri lets out a loud, sharp wail of noise, stumbling back away from the fire with sparks spraying from the iron within: there is a pause, and then from the furnace comes a squeal, followed by a mighty boar with golden hair, shining brightly even in the candlelight. It seems to shimmer, giving off its very own luminescence, and Loki inwardly curses as he flies up to the safety of the ceiling.

Gullinbursti, the golden-bristled boar of the flames, is quickly ushered to the side and penned in by a make-shift crate. Loki's faux-self shakes his head, appearing unimpressed, but the dwarves share a look of pure triumph.

Loki does so _hate_ dwarves.

Brokkr goes to the bellows then, and Sindri sets more gold into the fire. Loki watches them, appraisingly, and then whistles down once more, landing solidly upon Brokkr's neck and biting down once more: Brokkr nearly drops the bellows, but Loki had waited for too long – Sindri pulls a ring from the fire with a yell of delight, holding it up.

“For this ring, Draupnir,” Sindri proclaims, looking to the simulacrum of Loki settled across the room, “Eight new rings shall drip on every ninth night!”

“Perhaps more impressive than your pig,” proclaims the illusion. “But you've a third wonder yet to create!” The figure of magic declares none of the worry Loki himself is beginning to feel.

“For our next working, brother, I need be meticulous,” murmurs Sindri to Brokkr, and Loki hears it as he flies down, knowing he must not fail once more. Sindri works with iron, this time, and this time Loki delivers a bite in a crucial area – he bites at the lid of the dwarf's right eye, and blinds him on that side with blood. Nonetheless, Sindri pulls from the fire a hammer so great Loki knows it could never be surpassed.

_Mjölnir._

“This hammer,” proclaims Brokkr as Sindri lays ice upon his injured eye, “will never miss its mark, son of Odin! It will return with the barest command to its master!”

“And the handle is for a _dwarf_ , Brokkr,” Loki retorts even as he comes back to his own form, letting the illusion crumble into ambient magic. “Do you think any among my court would stand for so small a hammer's handle?”

“It is the hammer's _only_ flaw.” insists Brokkr, and Loki _huffs_.

“We shall see if those of Asgard agree!” comes his easy retort, and he takes his treasures and his leave: the dwarves, he know, will be in swift pursuit, but Loki will come to the halls of Asgard first.

\---

Loki is welcomed into the halls by stiff expressions and glares, but he is not unused to such cold treatment, and he walks with his head high and his posture _perfect_. “I return from the halls of Svartalfheim with treasures upon my back!” comes his proclamation, and it echoes in the hall. “For the God Freyr, to easily match his prodigious and unrivalled prosperity and virility, a boar of shining gold, Gullinbursti, and the ship Skidbladnir, which might be folded into his pocket upon making port!”

Freyr laughs, the sound an echoing delight, and he ruffles Loki's hair as if he is yet a child, pressing a fond kiss to Loki's bare cheek and patting the boar at his side. Loki feels a slight tinge of pink come to his white skin, but he does his best to draw no attention to it – Freyr is affectionate and stormy in turns, but Loki is so _drawn_ to him.

“For the Lady Sif,” Loki says, with the same ambassadorial tone, “A head of golden hair, far superior to that which she has _lost_.” His use of the passive voice is not lost on Fandral and Volstagg, who each snort to Hogun's disapproval and Thor's ire, and Loki uses magic to weave the new threads into her scalp, as easily as if they might have been natural. Sif steps back, then, tossing her pretty curls before slapping Volstagg and Fandral each across the face.

“For my father, for the _All_ father, the mighty Odin,” Loki turns to the throne, and he bows as he sends forth his gifts upon a wave of magic, “The ring Draupnir, which will produce new rings upon every ninth night, and the fearsome spear, Gungir.” Odin nods his head, seeming pleased, and Loki feels the barest stirrings of desperate pride in his chest at seeing his father pleased so.

“And last of all, for my brother. I offer my most _humble_ apologies, brother Thor, for it has its flaws where these other marvels do not, but I hope you might forgive me.” And Loki holds out the hammer.

Thor is, after all, the proudest Æsir of Asgard, and Loki has no doubt that he will see the short, stubby handle and know that Thor would think himself a caricature to wield it. Thor holds it in his hand, and then he throws it: Mjölnir flies true to the centre of the room and, at Thor's command, comes swiftly back to his hand.

Delighted, Thor holds the hammer with pride, and Loki's cold heart sinks within his chest.

“This hammer, brother,” Thor proclaims as the throne doors come open behind Loki, “is the best of these marvels! Truly, you have surpassed yourself in gleaning the Lady Sif's forgiveness!”

 _Forgiveness from so vile a creature_ , Loki can't help but think with a _bitter_ edge, _is hardly worth my pretty head_.

“Loki!” teases Brokkr as he enters, and Sindri laughs also despite the cloth patch over his right eye. “You've left no payment for these treasures! As Thor said, we easily _surpassed_ the work of Ivaldi.” Loki raises his chin, arching a well-groomed eyebrow.

“Why, of course, dear friends,” Loki purrs, and he kneels upon the ground with his hands with one hand behind his back. Brokkr comes close, raising an axe to the horror of Loki's mother and to Thor, but Loki holds up his other with his index finger raised. “ _Although_ , please remember that I offered you my head. I made no similar wager of my **neck** , which I am rather fond of. You would do well to leave it undamaged.”

Laughter filters around the edges of the room and Brokkr throws his axe to the ground with a mighty _crack_ of stone. Loki smirks, triumphant, as the dwarf Sindri tries to spit at him and is rewarded only with a burst of steam evaporating the attempt at shame.

“You are a _deceiver_ , Loki of Asgard!” snarls Brokkr, and Loki smiles at him, sweetly.

“Am I indeed?”

“You will pay their price, Loki!” says Odin, “It will merely have to be adjusted. Perhaps they might take your silver _tongue_.”

“Father!” Loki protests sharply, but Brokkr has him by the mouth already, pulling him forwards. The dwarven brothers share a look and Loki closes his eyes tightly as he sees the needle, determined to make not a _sound_.

\---

Blood drips slowly from Loki's chin as the golden threads adjust themselves in place, sewn through his lips: they will scar him, Loki is certain, but easily can he hide _that_. He soothes the tortured flesh with the barest hint of magical frost, but he looks a horror, he knows, like a scare-crow with its sack mouth sewn shut: the golden threads are crossed over his lips to keep him from speaking, and Loki has been ordered to leave them a _week_ before he draws them from his skin.

His father is a cruel man.

“Oh, fear not, Loki,” Sif snorts as she passes him by. “Those threads are the same as those upon my head, are they not? At least they are **beautiful**.” Loki arches a silent eyebrow, and then, thrilling in the way Sif's eyes widen in horror, he raises one hand.

“Loki, no, you _can't_ -” The black that seeps into Sif's hair is like that of brown ink in water, staining the golden with ease and fluid speed: within a few moments, Sif's hair is shining darkly, as plain and brown as that of any tavern girl's. Loki has not even blessed her with ebony strands as shine upon his own head.

It hurts to smile, but he does so nonetheless as Sif looks at her hair with _dismay_.

Those of Asgard will learn one day, perhaps, not to trifle with this Prince of Asgard, even as he lies in pain.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Requests are open and encouraged! Send them [here.](http://dictionarywrites.tumblr.com/ask)


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